There's no doubting that our little island paradise has been extremely fortunate thus far when it comes to having avoided the worst of the Covid-19 extremes.
This has resulted in some unsurprising, but not particularly helpful trends.
Firstly, a lot of public commentary has both prematurely declared victory in a war that is still many more months away from being won, while also completely ignoring other countries that have done just as well, or better than NZ to date.
(And that's to say nothing of the missing - and essential for accuracy - data about the different population sizes, densities, demographics, seasons, and other vital differences between us and other countries we are simplistically comparing ourselves to based solely on total case/fatality numbers.)
I find it absolutely perplexing that so many column inches, Tweets and Facebook posts have been dedicated to the success of our country against Coronavirus by people who seem to be completely ignorant of Taiwan.
Taiwan has a population density that is over 35 times higher than NZ (652 per KM/2 as opposed to our 18 per KM/2), yet they have only 18 Coronavirus cases per million people, whereas we have 300 cases per million.
Taiwan's Coronavirus death rate is also ten times lower than ours at just 0.3 deaths per million people, compared to our 3 deaths per million people.
Not only is this a hugely impressive success, but they have achieved it without a lockdown.
Anyone would think that us moderns have developed the extremely bad habit of headline browsing instead of embarking on a more detailed investigation before forming views about important issues (and yes, I am also guilty of doing exactly this on more occasions than I would care to admit.)
Another noticeable trend in recent days has been an increased idolisation of a Prime Minister who was a deft hand at PR and communication well before this crisis unfolded (I've long said that media engagement is by far her greatest strength).
This has now reached the point where people are being attacked with increasing hostility simply for asking important questions about the current state of affairs in our country.
Last week I was sent a private message telling me that civilly raising questions was immoral and dangerous and that I was violating the common good by doing this.
That sort of reaction is unsurprising when so many people are consumed by fear, but it is nonetheless false, irrational and extremely concerning.
The vitriolic response to Simon Bridge's social media message on Monday was another very alarming example of this.
Accusing the leader of the opposition of 'politicking', hurling insults and telling him that he was completely out of line for raising questions during a time of major crisis is a troubling sign for anyone who cares about government accountability.
This is not about whether you agree or disagree with Simon Bridges, this is about the concerning spectre of a large number of Kiwis - including some in the media - who currently seem to believe that we should be living under a one party state without any challenging of Government actions permitted.
In his relatively brief social media post, Bridges stated that:
"...the Government has not used this time to ensure best practice of testing and tracing and the availability of PPE hasn’t been at the standard it should have been."
Bridges made that statement less than two hours before the New Zealand Herald published a story at 6:17pm on Monday night about an offical audit which revealed that our:
"Regional public health units were overrun and unable to trace enough people likely exposed to Covid-19, even when there were fewer than 100 suspected cases of the virus a day."
Not only are those contact tracing teams vitally essential to protecting New Zealand from the Coronavirus, but for weeks now we have been led to believe that our contact tracing efforts were world class.
This was one area where, until last night, I genuinely believed that exceptional work was being done by the Government, but this audit has revealed that the truth was very different to the impression being given at the daily press briefings.
In fact, the audit's findings suggest that if our case numbers had been much higher this vitally important defence mechanism would have almost certainly failed us - which obviously would have had a potentially very deadly outcome.
As the NZ Herald article points out about how important this work is:
"combined with other basic public health measures, [contract tracing] has over 90 per cent efficacy against Covid-19 at the population level, making it as effective as many vaccines."
Then this afternoon it was announced that the Auditor-General has initiated an independent audit into the Government's management of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) for the Covid-19 crisis.
This comes after healthcare workers in hospitals, aged care facilities, and other places have consistently spoken out about access to PPE and the poor quality of what has sometimes been provided to them.
Again, this is another vitally important defence mechanism against Covid-19, and it is also another area where the Government has been claiming for weeks that we have more than enough PPE to safeguard those on the frontlines of this crisis.
These two audits are not insignificant, and they raise serious questions about whether our response to Covid-19 really is as robust and effective as we have all been led to believe that it is.
Perhaps if we weren't so busy rushing to demonise anyone daring to raise questions of the Government we might realise that there are some very important issues that need urgent answers as we prepare to loosen a lockdown and head into our cold and flu season.
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